When your hiring process drags and drags, you’re not doing anyone involved any favors. You’re sucking up your hiring manager’s time, and causing applicants to get frustrated. Yet if you don’t make a conscious effort to streamline the process, it’s easy for it to drag on for weeks or even months. Here are some easy ways to achieve a more effortless, efficient hiring process:

Set up a separate space for job applications

If your hiring manager is trying to pick out job applications as they flow into their regular work e-mail inbox, you can bet that the process is going to take more time than it needs to. Instead, create a separate place where only job applications go. This makes it easy to see who’s applied, and to read through résumés and cover letters. It cuts down on clutter for your hiring manager, and also prevents qualified candidates from getting overlooked.

Set up roadblocks to prevent unqualified candidates from advancing

If you’ve been involved in hiring before, you know that there are often dozens of candidates who apply who simply aren’t qualified for the position. Instead of wasting time scanning through these résumés and cover letters, set up roadblocks so that only people who are truly qualified are able to advance. Have candidates fill out a questionnaire that determines whether their documents will warrant a look from your hiring manager. You may also want to consider video interviewing candidates. One-way interviews enable you to personally connect with candidates so you can better determine if they will be a good fit for your team. You simply invite candidates to record answers to your interview questions and review them on your own time. If you know that a candidate wouldn’t mesh with your company culture after one or two responses, you can just move on to the next candidate. This ensures that your staff’s time is being used most effectively, and helps to keep the process moving along swiftly.

Figure out how you’re going to inform applicants when the search is over

Though no one likes to let people know that they didn’t get the job they applied for, making that call or sending that e-mail is necessary. Develop a system to make sure that this final step in the hiring process is as easy as possible. You can write a form e-mail that’s mass delivered or develop a system for making phone calls to the applicants. That way you’re not trying to retrace your steps and figure out whom you’ve contacted and who’s still left in the dark.

How do you keep your hiring process efficient? Let us know in the comments!